I'm pretty confused by this game getting a remake. I know it's already been 7 years, but imo remaster should happen for really old titles or after you've at least launched a couple more games and you've got a really killer reason to do so.
I don't want to take anything way from the developers, but it feels kinda lazy.
Yeah they’ve got a ton going on! I hope the next league rocks because necropolis definitely hasn’t felt like a “I want to play this the whole time” league and the population generally agrees.
I'm a bit thankful they delayed the beta though because stuff is way too chaotic right now lol
I don't want to be a nuisance, but can we please get the new editor for account management as well? That's close to uneditable right now.
That is a strange one! I've got a new version of account management almost finished so we'll roll out a fix by rolling out the new account management feature.
Apologies for the less than ideal experience for now.
Quite interesting stats here. Pretty crazy to think that only 21% of the cards are collectable. Also I'd imagine that even though Duels was removed from the game, all the cards associated with that mode are still in the client. For some reason I assumed Duels assets would be removed to reduce the size of the game, especially for mobile clients.
As for those extra 700 cards in the OoG DB, maybe there's duplicate cards from past core sets that weren't removed?
Yeah! All the duels stuff remains in the game. I'm definitely going to need to check now to see if you're right about past core sets having their card data removed from the client. Added to the infinite todo list.
Unlocked frame rates with the PC release is a fantastic addition. I've never played a God of War game on PC (not that we could until GoW dropped in 2022) so this is a very tempting buy during a sale.
Looks like the game will have PSN requirements. So a good chunk of the people won't be able to play for basically no reason. Yaaaay...
Hope they roll that back after the Helldivers 2 fiasco, and they just didn't have time to update the trailer.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that they feel this was needed. I wonder how much of it is just wanting to boost the accounts made metrics on the PlayStation network vs actually thinking by people making those accounts they're going to sell them hardware due to the branding being in their face all the time.
Couch co-op is great to see! I know how popular this is within the Diablo franchise so GGG putting it up there for PoE 2 is huge news. Cross play and progression though, that's the real winner. PoE 2 has looked like a really good controller game since its debut and so it might be cool to play it on the TV occasionally.
ASTRO's Playroom was an incredibly fun title to play and it was great to see them demo all the functionality the new controllers had. I am 100% going to make sure I play this on launch.
Yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense they were so afraid to advertise the game early on. You gotta wonder if it was a huge learning thing for them and if they won't make the same mistake next time around
I think it's great that Cora has been willing to share fun little behind the scenes bits for Hearthstone and hope it continues. I'm really wondering what art in the mini-set is a continuation of a story though and it's "messed up".
Indeed! Pretty neat to see them expand the set that way. Not sure how I feel about more 8 mana 8/8s but bringing back the Un'Goro Pack mechanic as other packs is really cool and a great way to continue paying respect to the game's history.
I'll be finishing up my "BroSF" league with my buddy in Path of Exile which has been a blast. We ran our own league so we could trade with each other but there was no possibility of outside trading so it was quite an interesting departure from the norm. It is 100% my new favourite way to play and I look forward to avoiding the trade league like the plague in the future.
Outside of that, I want to dive more into Tears of the Kingdom. The game is coming up on its 1 year anniversary on May 12, and I've barely scratched the surface which is embaressing. It's so damn difficult to find time to do everything I want in life!
Outside of that, I'm hoping to get to spend some time in Pandaria during the upcoming World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria Remix event that arrives in a couple of weeks. I'd a lso really like to play Hades II. I'm uncertain if I want to get on the Hades train now or later though because I'd like to play it after the full release instead of early access but at the same time, it has been a while since I played the original so jumping into II sounds like a ton of fun.
F1 2024 releases on May 31 so that's probably more of a June game but oh man, I can't wait to get the wheel out. I do need to fix my Valve Index though before that arrives. I don't know what's wrong with it but it no longer seems to work at all which is =(
Pretty light because i like to wait before buying the next "incredible bla bla bla" that's going to become the "best X type of game in the world"
It's always smart to wait and get deals on games. It's crazy at how even just a few weeks after a game launch you can see games at a 10% discount. There are only a few games I will always buy at full price: World of Warcraft and Formula 1. I just can't not play on the launch for them, WoW more so due to it being an online game that is oh so fun with everyone as you're learning new content.
Honestly, I thought it would be more but this is also a bit extreme. I know this doesn't include the couple thousand I almost certainly have spent on Path of Exile cosmetics over the years, since I buy that currency directly from Grinding Gear Games.
16 Years of Service means on average I spend $415 a year on Steam, or about $34 a month. That really puts it into perspective - gaming as a hobby is hella cheap!
Yeah, no BlizzCon for WoW 30 feels so weird. I get it though:
Hearthstone will just have an expansion, and some esports people generally no longer care about.
Diablo IV expansion is coming out later this year, probably before a scheduled BlizzCon.
Realistically they could talk about the next season at BlizzCon, eh.
StarCraft lol
Heroes of the storm lol
Overwatch 2 lol
Warcraft Rumble lol
I wish this wasn't the case, it's been pretty fun and I haven't felt the need to pay to play. Game seems quite dead though.
World of Warcraft seems like the only game that actually has anything going on, so doing WoW-specific events does make sense and if they can truly do global Blizzard-run events, then that's even better for more players as BlizzCon is quite out of reach.
WoW Classic has two big things coming up for that November area though. By the time we get there, Season of Discovery should be close to being done if it isn't already. It would be a great time to announce their next seasonal endevours. For Cataclysm on the Classic-proper timeline, we're talking about Rage of the Firelands making its debut in October so it could be time to announce Mists of Pandaria, even though the later Dragonflight patch isn't coming until January.
WoW proper, we don't have an exact release date yet for The War Within but it should already be out by then so talking about the next couple of patches would make for great BlizzCon content. However, with that said, I don't think you'd get people as hyped as we all were for when the trio of expansions was announced last year. That's the biggest problem with BlizzCon; You just can't time all the games around it to have a really killer show.
Which sucks because covering BlizzCon is always a ton of fun. Chaotic fun.
I don't think any of this has any direction from Microsoft though. Their communications have been that Blizzard needs to be allowed to be Blizzard and honestly, it would be really bad to not allow that to happen and BlizzCon, and the overall Blizzard community is a very important part of that. Yes, BlizzCon is expensive to run, but it's run as a marketing tool. The reach online is massive. If people aren't at the show they tune in online, if not on streams then they consume all the news through social media, Blizzard's blogs, other gaming blogs and channels. Having one big show about all things Blizzard turns the weekend into seeing Blizzard everywhere, which can be very powerful for a brand.
I think about all the posts I see places and how you'll see maybe a dozen articles come out in a 10 minute period in the afternoon, how many people never actually caught the first ones that went up for some indie title and how had they of just scheduled their release better, they could have had a better timeslot of promotion. It blows my mind how people hit that same 12-1pm area (eastern). It's certainly friendly for of North America and Europe, but everyone else has the same train of thought so it's less noticable.
BlizzCon though? That's their weekend! Everyone is going to see Blizzard.
I remember traveling to the Ashlands when the game first came out to see in development content. There was not much to be seen, much like the Mistlands at the time, but daaamn they have really leveled it up.
It looks like its in public testing now so full release soon!
This expansion got me to play Hearthstone again, though it didn't last. For the first time in two years I bought a pre-order for an expansion and actually played. A bunch of the cards looked like fun, seeing what was coming back and leaving drove some interest, and it had been a while since I played any digital card game, with much of my time spent elsewhere.
I don't really know why I stopped playing and maybe that's a good thing. I'd hate to feel like I had to play the game or I was going to be missing out on something.
The early access card was certifiable bullshit but I wasn't playing prior to launch so it wasn't a huge deal for me personally, but I do no like the race to the bottom that is early access for pre-ordering; And that includes WoW's 3 days of playing early even if it doesn't really give people much of an advantage. Cosmetics becoming so expensive in Hearthstone is disappointing, especially after asking for them from Blizzard for literal years.
It would be nice if there were more earnable things in the game that weren't just hey complete our rewards track. Stuff that sticks around for more than an expansion period so people had big things to work towards. Wouldn't it be cool if there were signature cards that you could unlock by simply playing with the card itself with each card leveling up with experience? I'm sure they'd find a way to turn it into the chaos that is Marvel Snap's card cosmetic progression system (huge yuck) but one can certainly dream.
I'm not really adding much to this post and just sorta complaining at this point so I'll cut it there. I do wish that there was a card game that was as engaging and visually awesome as Hearthstone with great developer support behind it that didn't go so deep into mobilefication. I've played around with so many iterations of mechanics to create something awesome, but man is it hard to nail the visual perfection that Hearthstone has. So many card games have good mechanics, but their cards, the entire point of the game, look like ass. Blizzard does visuals very well and Warcraft's themes feel so comfortable - though that might be the WoW veteran bias in me.
The quest change is absolute insanity and is not the way you increase engagement in the game. I'd love to know what business unit said we need to make quests take longer and provide rewards that are not inline with the time.
I'm pretty confused by this game getting a remake. I know it's already been 7 years, but imo remaster should happen for really old titles or after you've at least launched a couple more games and you've got a really killer reason to do so.
I don't want to take anything way from the developers, but it feels kinda lazy.
Yeah they’ve got a ton going on! I hope the next league rocks because necropolis definitely hasn’t felt like a “I want to play this the whole time” league and the population generally agrees.
I'm a bit thankful they delayed the beta though because stuff is way too chaotic right now lol
That is a strange one! I've got a new version of account management almost finished so we'll roll out a fix by rolling out the new account management feature.
Apologies for the less than ideal experience for now.
Yeah! All the duels stuff remains in the game. I'm definitely going to need to check now to see if you're right about past core sets having their card data removed from the client. Added to the infinite todo list.
Unlocked frame rates with the PC release is a fantastic addition. I've never played a God of War game on PC (not that we could until GoW dropped in 2022) so this is a very tempting buy during a sale.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that they feel this was needed. I wonder how much of it is just wanting to boost the accounts made metrics on the PlayStation network vs actually thinking by people making those accounts they're going to sell them hardware due to the branding being in their face all the time.
Couch co-op is great to see! I know how popular this is within the Diablo franchise so GGG putting it up there for PoE 2 is huge news. Cross play and progression though, that's the real winner. PoE 2 has looked like a really good controller game since its debut and so it might be cool to play it on the TV occasionally.
This is super exciting!
ASTRO's Playroom was an incredibly fun title to play and it was great to see them demo all the functionality the new controllers had. I am 100% going to make sure I play this on launch.
Yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense they were so afraid to advertise the game early on. You gotta wonder if it was a huge learning thing for them and if they won't make the same mistake next time around
My blood boils reading your comment lol.
Absolutely aburd at how stupid the gaming industry, hell any industry with public companies, is.
Now that's a pro gamer move.
I think it's great that Cora has been willing to share fun little behind the scenes bits for Hearthstone and hope it continues. I'm really wondering what art in the mini-set is a continuation of a story though and it's "messed up".
Indeed! Pretty neat to see them expand the set that way. Not sure how I feel about more 8 mana 8/8s but bringing back the Un'Goro Pack mechanic as other packs is really cool and a great way to continue paying respect to the game's history.
I'll be finishing up my "BroSF" league with my buddy in Path of Exile which has been a blast. We ran our own league so we could trade with each other but there was no possibility of outside trading so it was quite an interesting departure from the norm. It is 100% my new favourite way to play and I look forward to avoiding the trade league like the plague in the future.
Outside of that, I want to dive more into Tears of the Kingdom. The game is coming up on its 1 year anniversary on May 12, and I've barely scratched the surface which is embaressing. It's so damn difficult to find time to do everything I want in life!
Outside of that, I'm hoping to get to spend some time in Pandaria during the upcoming World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria Remix event that arrives in a couple of weeks. I'd a lso really like to play Hades II. I'm uncertain if I want to get on the Hades train now or later though because I'd like to play it after the full release instead of early access but at the same time, it has been a while since I played the original so jumping into II sounds like a ton of fun.
F1 2024 releases on May 31 so that's probably more of a June game but oh man, I can't wait to get the wheel out. I do need to fix my Valve Index though before that arrives. I don't know what's wrong with it but it no longer seems to work at all which is =(
It's always smart to wait and get deals on games. It's crazy at how even just a few weeks after a game launch you can see games at a 10% discount. There are only a few games I will always buy at full price: World of Warcraft and Formula 1. I just can't not play on the launch for them, WoW more so due to it being an online game that is oh so fun with everyone as you're learning new content.
Honestly, I thought it would be more but this is also a bit extreme. I know this doesn't include the couple thousand I almost certainly have spent on Path of Exile cosmetics over the years, since I buy that currency directly from Grinding Gear Games.
16 Years of Service means on average I spend $415 a year on Steam, or about $34 a month. That really puts it into perspective - gaming as a hobby is hella cheap!
Yeah, no BlizzCon for WoW 30 feels so weird. I get it though:
World of Warcraft seems like the only game that actually has anything going on, so doing WoW-specific events does make sense and if they can truly do global Blizzard-run events, then that's even better for more players as BlizzCon is quite out of reach.
WoW Classic has two big things coming up for that November area though. By the time we get there, Season of Discovery should be close to being done if it isn't already. It would be a great time to announce their next seasonal endevours. For Cataclysm on the Classic-proper timeline, we're talking about Rage of the Firelands making its debut in October so it could be time to announce Mists of Pandaria, even though the later Dragonflight patch isn't coming until January.
WoW proper, we don't have an exact release date yet for The War Within but it should already be out by then so talking about the next couple of patches would make for great BlizzCon content. However, with that said, I don't think you'd get people as hyped as we all were for when the trio of expansions was announced last year. That's the biggest problem with BlizzCon; You just can't time all the games around it to have a really killer show.
Which sucks because covering BlizzCon is always a ton of fun. Chaotic fun.
I don't think any of this has any direction from Microsoft though. Their communications have been that Blizzard needs to be allowed to be Blizzard and honestly, it would be really bad to not allow that to happen and BlizzCon, and the overall Blizzard community is a very important part of that. Yes, BlizzCon is expensive to run, but it's run as a marketing tool. The reach online is massive. If people aren't at the show they tune in online, if not on streams then they consume all the news through social media, Blizzard's blogs, other gaming blogs and channels. Having one big show about all things Blizzard turns the weekend into seeing Blizzard everywhere, which can be very powerful for a brand.
I think about all the posts I see places and how you'll see maybe a dozen articles come out in a 10 minute period in the afternoon, how many people never actually caught the first ones that went up for some indie title and how had they of just scheduled their release better, they could have had a better timeslot of promotion. It blows my mind how people hit that same 12-1pm area (eastern). It's certainly friendly for of North America and Europe, but everyone else has the same train of thought so it's less noticable.
BlizzCon though? That's their weekend! Everyone is going to see Blizzard.
I remember traveling to the Ashlands when the game first came out to see in development content. There was not much to be seen, much like the Mistlands at the time, but daaamn they have really leveled it up.
It looks like its in public testing now so full release soon!
This expansion got me to play Hearthstone again, though it didn't last. For the first time in two years I bought a pre-order for an expansion and actually played. A bunch of the cards looked like fun, seeing what was coming back and leaving drove some interest, and it had been a while since I played any digital card game, with much of my time spent elsewhere.
I don't really know why I stopped playing and maybe that's a good thing. I'd hate to feel like I had to play the game or I was going to be missing out on something.
The early access card was certifiable bullshit but I wasn't playing prior to launch so it wasn't a huge deal for me personally, but I do no like the race to the bottom that is early access for pre-ordering; And that includes WoW's 3 days of playing early even if it doesn't really give people much of an advantage. Cosmetics becoming so expensive in Hearthstone is disappointing, especially after asking for them from Blizzard for literal years.
It would be nice if there were more earnable things in the game that weren't just hey complete our rewards track. Stuff that sticks around for more than an expansion period so people had big things to work towards. Wouldn't it be cool if there were signature cards that you could unlock by simply playing with the card itself with each card leveling up with experience? I'm sure they'd find a way to turn it into the chaos that is Marvel Snap's card cosmetic progression system (huge yuck) but one can certainly dream.
I'm not really adding much to this post and just sorta complaining at this point so I'll cut it there. I do wish that there was a card game that was as engaging and visually awesome as Hearthstone with great developer support behind it that didn't go so deep into mobilefication. I've played around with so many iterations of mechanics to create something awesome, but man is it hard to nail the visual perfection that Hearthstone has. So many card games have good mechanics, but their cards, the entire point of the game, look like ass. Blizzard does visuals very well and Warcraft's themes feel so comfortable - though that might be the WoW veteran bias in me.
The quest change is absolute insanity and is not the way you increase engagement in the game. I'd love to know what business unit said we need to make quests take longer and provide rewards that are not inline with the time.